Sydney: Before the Walkers
by CRebel
Summary: A collection of one-shots concerning the lives of Sydney, Daryl, and Leah before the world ended.
1. The Start

**Disclaimer: I own nothing of _The Walking Dead._**

**_. . . . ._**

Leah Cartwright was immensely pissed off and incredibly turned on when, upon leaving her bathroom and reappearing in the living room sans shirt and bra, Daryl Dixon barely batted an eye.

Instead, he looked her up and down like this was just nothing new and took a swig from the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel's. "Hell of a first date."

Leah wasn't used to a reaction like that, and she sure as hell hadn't anticipated anything different this time, but many hours in the courtroom had trained her to hold tight to her best poker face. So, she only propped an arm against the hallway wall, ever so casually, and if her breasts happened to press together as she did, well, so be it. "It's not really a first date, though, is it? I mean, aren't we just celebrating my saving your brother's ass?"

Daryl moved closer, bottle swinging in his hand. "Any lawyer coulda done it."

"Any lawyer coulda gotten the judge to drop a drug possession charge like _that?_ No. Sweetheart, you're taking for granted my impressive skill set. My _very_ impressive skill set." She smiled a closed-lipped smile she knew would get him, it had to, and pulled the whiskey bottle from his hand. She sent the drink burning through her like all the other drinks before, let the buzzing in her head stir itself up happily. The hangover tomorrow would be hell. Screw work, though. Everyone at the firm already knew she was top fucking dog. Daryl was very close now. His forehead almost touched hers, his hot breath moved her hair, flooded over her neck, touched her chest like warm fingers.

"You talk big," he said.

"Maybe I do. Tell you what. Man up and decide yourself, Dixon."

The words rolled from Leah's tongue and she got lost in it all as soon as they were gone – his hot breath and the whiskey and smoke that clung to them both thanks to too many drinks and cigarettes, everything seeped into her, moved through her blood and muscles and bone and brain and _she liked it_, she liked this getting lost, she liked _him_, Daryl Dixon, she liked him, his tattoos, his stubble, how he said _ain't,_ how he wasn't husband material, how he wasn't father material, how he was the last person – the _last _person – a promising young lawyer should be involved with, and goddamn, she liked the way his lips were moving against hers now, no reservation, hungry, and how he dug a hand into her hair and they went deeper, deeper. She liked it when he pushed her against the wall, she liked how the whiskey bottle fell to the floor and cracked and she couldn't be bothered to give a damn about it because her drunken mind was no longer concerned with mundane things likes spills and stains and landlords, there was only murmuring through the haze how this one-night stand didn't have to be a one-night stand, and then Daryl's shirt was off and Leah's hands were at his belt and her drunken mind didn't think a thing anymore.


	2. Fling

"You seriously gonna do this?"

Daryl dropped the tent into the truck bed and rubbed his forehead. "Don't see why not."

"'Cause that little bitch of a lawyer probably ain't never spent a day of her life offa silk sheets." Merle leaned against the truck and took the cigarette from his mouth, blew smoke in his brother's face. Daryl said nothing. Merle tilted his head.

"How long you gonna keep this up, anyhow?"

"Whataya mean?"

"This cute little flinga yours, that's what I mean."

"Dunno. Guess 'til it gets old."

"Uh-huh."

Daryl walked around the truck, got in, slammed the door. Merle came to the open passenger side window. "You do know that's all this is, right, little brother? A fling?"

"Yep."

"Good." He crossed his arms over the windowsill, that stupid smirk still on his face. Daryl saw it and turned his eyes forward, kept them there. "'Cause people like her don't got no use for people like you. Keep this up too long, she'll figure it out, and she'll put ya out like trash on the curb." He flicked away the cigarette. "Or, say, she might just try to polish ya up. Dress you like you's a doll, give you a hundred-percent makeover, try to turn you into somethin' you ain't. But maybe you'd like that?"

"Screw you. That ain't gonna happen."

"Good. 'Cause even if it did, it wouldn't work for long. A tiger don't change its stripes, Daryl."

Daryl stared at his hands. Dirt under the fingernails, callouses, scars. Nothing like Leah's.

Merle patted the side of the truck. "Y'all have fun, now. Oh, and 'member – no glove, no love."

. . . . .

Twelve hours later, Daryl stepped out of the tent and grabbed his shotgun away from Leah.

She gasped, jumped back, leapt close again. "I heard something –"

"Get in the truck."

"No, I'm not –"

"Leah, _get in the damn truck_."

She typically scoffed at anything Daryl tried to tell her to do. Independent woman and all that. But this time, because of the tone of his voice or simply her acceptance that she was not meant for the outdoors, Leah gave him no more hell than a sharp glare before she turned and marched to his truck.

It took him ten minutes to pack the tent, the bags, and to throw everything in the truck, but he still wasn't up for talking when he climbed into the driver's seat. To Leah's credit, she didn't try to get him to say anything right away. No, she waited for about twenty minutes. He had his truck off the dirt road and on an empty highway when she spoke.

"I'm sorry."

He said nothing. He'd told her she wouldn't like camping. She had to try and prove him wrong, though, of course she did. Well, she hadn't.

"Anyone ever tell you you're grumpy when you don't sleep enough?"

"I swear to God, Leah –"

"Pull over."

"What?"

"Pull over." She'd turned her body towards him. "I want to apologize and there's only one sure-fire way I know to get into your head, so . . ."

He steered the truck to the shoulder, then off the road, over to the edge of the woods. "You don't give me enough credit, woman."

"And yet you pulled over. Shut the hell up." Then she was in his lap, their limbs quickly tangled, and her hair fell over them and Daryl got tangled in that, too.

And when they were finished, he said he loved her. He'd never said that to a woman before and he hadn't meant to do it now, he wasn't supposed to, Christ, this was just a fling.

Leah laughed and said it back. But the whole thing felt wrong, and Daryl knew those words wouldn't become a regular thing between them. They couldn't. Because this was just a fling.


	3. Telling

They were lying in Leah's bed early one Saturday morning, three months into the relationship, when Leah finally brought it up.

"You ever going to tell me about it?"

She traced a finger over Daryl's neck. He was lying on his stomach and she was resting on his back, and Daryl, he didn't have to ask what she meant – he'd known this was coming – but he asked anyway, mostly because he hoped she'd get the hint and drop it.

"'Bout what?"'

Her lips, cool and soft, pressed into his right shoulder blade. "About this." Now his left shoulder blade. "And this." Now lower on his back. "This . . ." She stopped, exhaled onto his skin. "Do I need to keep going?"

"You can."

She breathed out again, heavier this time, and rose off his back to slide up along the mattress. When she lowered herself, she was eye-to-eye with him, and she waited like that.

"You ain't stupid, Leah," Daryl finally said. He was whispering. He hadn't meant to.

She nodded and turned her gaze to the ceiling. "More than once?"

"Lot more."

"Your whole childhood?"

Now it was his turn to sigh. She didn't ask anything else after that. But she reached out to graze her fingers through his hair and down his shoulder. Daryl liked her touch. Damn near liked her eyes more, though. Pine tree eyes, that's what he called them. Green with little brown spots. Beautiful.

And now they were gone as she sat up, throwing and kicking the comforter off of her pale legs. "I'm gonna make you waffles."

Daryl watched her stand, watched her saunter around the bed and over to the armchair in the corner of the room, where she took up her favorite black robe and swung it around her body. "I ain't eatin' no gluten-free health shit."

"You'll eat it and you'll love it. Know why?" She came back and leaned over him, grinned with her perfect teeth. "Because I sleep with you and you don't even have to pay me."

His arms flew up, trapped her, and he rolled over to toss her next to him on the mattress. "Stop it!" she giggled as he started in her neck. "Daryl! No! I have to make you shitty waffles!"

He moved from her neck to her mouth and she stopped talking.

. . . . .

At ten o'clock that night, Leah sent Daryl onto her balcony and soon joined him with two shot glasses, a Jim Beam bottle, and Daryl's cigarettes. She put everything on the little iron table that separated the two iron chairs and poured the drinks while Daryl lit up. She slid one of the shots over to him and sat in the open chair, helping herself to a cigarette and gesturing for Daryl's lighter. A minute or two passed with them smoking in silence, and then Leah downed her shot and said, "Please tell me about it."

So he did.


	4. Plus Sign

"You look disgusting," Leah said when a sweat-stained Daryl let himself into her pristine bathroom. She sat on the edge of the tub, dressed only in the red flannel shirt, his, that she'd taken to sleeping in over the past few weeks.

"You try workin' in a lumberyard in this heat, Miss Priss." But Daryl's heart wasn't in it, because her eyes were red. She hadn't been to work today, that was obvious, her hair was a mess and she didn't have a trace of makeup on. And her voice just now – and when she called him to tell him _Get over here, please _– wasn't right. Wasn't good. "What's goin' on?"

Her mouth opened, her lips moved a little, but only a couple of ragged breaths came out. Something inside Daryl twisted and his next words were harder than they should have been. "What's goin' on? Leah, you can't just call me here in the middle of the damn day and –"

Her hand flew to her mouth and then went up to her eyes and covered them. She sobbed once, a tiny sob, and it would have been better if it was a body-racking sort of sob, not little like that, not so pathetic, and Daryl flinched, looked away, then bent down to Leah, put his hands on her shaking shoulders. "Hey, sorry, I'm sorry . . ."

She kept hiding. Kept shaking.

"Leah – look – damn, just tell me what's wrong. Just –"

The hand not covering her eyes shot into the air and pointed. At the sink. Daryl looked.

He thought it was a thermometer at first. When he realized it wasn't, he backtracked and tried to convince himself again that it was. But it just wasn't.

It was a small bathroom. All Daryl had to do was straighten, but even that wasn't easy to do; every one of his muscles had gone numb. When he did manage a full stand, though, he had a good enough view of the thing, the innocent white stick, a good enough view for him to make out the little plus sign on it.

Some time passed.

"That mean it's positive?"

"Yes."

He closed his eyes. When he opened them a little while later, he meant to turn to Leah but found himself focusing on a spot in the tiled wall instead. "Is it –"

"I swear to God, if you ask if it's yours –"

"Is it – I mean – accurate? The test, Leah, is it . . . is it good? Ain't you s'posed to take more'n one?"

With that, Leah was on her feet and shoving a wastebasket in his face. It was empty except for three more little white sticks.

He turned away. He heard the hollow bang of the wastebasket hitting the floor and he wiped his face. The sweat from work had dried on the drive over here but now he was sweating again, only it was different, it was a cold sweat, the bad kind of sweat, and he shivered once and then sort of kept doing it, again and again.

"When I missed the pill that time," Leah said, "I told you about it? That's when it must have happened."

Daryl couldn't care less when it happened. He went into the hallway. He aimed to head to the kitchen, get a drink, but he ended up against the wall with his hands on his knees. "You only missed one pill?" he said to Leah's carpet, the thick white carpet she fussed over all the time, as if things like carpet actually mattered. "How could you wind up – how could this happen if you only missed _one goddamn pill?"_

She'd followed him, she was next to him, a few feet away, he could see her bare feet, her toenails, painted a deep red. He'd never seen her without her toenails painted. He hadn't known her long, after all, just five months. She was talking, Leah, sexy Leah with the painted toenails and the breathy laugh and the birth control pills. She was saying she didn't know. Then she was trying to say something else but she mostly just made a choking noise. Crying. Daryl'd only seen her cry once, after some fight with her parents over he didn't know what, but he remembered he'd thought it was stupid but it still made Leah yell and then cry into his shirt, and he'd made that better with booze and sex, but now? For maybe once in his adult life he couldn't even think about sex and pregnant women weren't supposed to booze, and Leah was –

Daryl slammed his hand into the wall and one of Leah's pictures of a daisy or a tulip or some shit like that fell to the floor and he whirled away from it, going after that drink or maybe heading for his truck, but Leah grabbed his arm. "Don't do that," she said, and God, she sounded bad, so he turned and she came into his arms and her hair smelled a little like flowers and a little like hazelnut and now she was asking what the hell they were going to do and Daryl said nothing, because how the fuck would he know? "You're not father material," she whispered at one point, and Daryl knew she was right, but it still pissed him off, but that was Leah, this was how she was and how they worked, this is what he had signed up for, but he never thought this would happen, he'd never wanted this.

"You're such a damn bitch," he muttered, and she shoved him, but not hard enough to actually push him away, so Daryl kept holding her, and she cried, and he kept holding her, holding her and holding her, maybe for her sake or maybe because her five-foot-three one-hundred-twenty pound quivering pregnant body was the only thing keeping him upright.


	5. Good Man

"Could you give us a minute?" Leah asked the realtor, a woman who smiled with all of her teeth and spoke too fast and too _happy._ She gushed out a prolonged version of _yes _and left the living room, and Daryl heard Leah murmur under her breath. In spite of himself, in spite of the situation, that made him smile a little.

He stood in the kitchen, looking out the glass door that led to the backyard. It was a good backyard, about half an acre, enclosed in a seven-foot wooden fence. Beyond the fence, there was a forest, but from what Leah had told him before they came here – as she did her best to advertise – those woods sure as hell weren't the kind of deep, thick woods Daryl could spend a weekend hunting in. They were woods for show, woods that made all the soccer moms and barbeque dads think they were at one with nature.

The _click . . . click . . . click _of a high-heeled Leah walking up behind him. "What do you think, Dixon?"

"It's fine."

"You said that about the last two houses. I think I like this one the most. Best deal, too." She paused. "Tell me what you're thinking."

"I said it's _fine_, Leah." He turned from the door, met her eyes, and looked over the place. The kitchen and the living room were separated by two archways, where the living room carpet met the linoleum of the kitchen. In between the arches was a short bar Daryl knew Leah liked. The kitchen was small – it was a pretty small house – but nice, with its shiny counters and high-tech stove and burnt orange walls and wide white-paned windows. Yes, very nice. Nicer than anywhere Daryl had lived before. He fluttered his fingers. "Just never pictured livin' in a picket fence house."

"It doesn't have a picket fence."

"Might as well." He passed her and went into the living room, already furnished with a brown leather couch and matching armchair the realtor said the owners wanted to sell with the place. Daryl was still getting used to the idea that the furniture, and the entire house, was in his price range. Or, theirs, as Leah would say. But hell, it was really _hers_ . . .

Two windows were inlaid in the wall in here. He looked out of one, out at the street and the house across from this one. And the nearly identical house next to that, where there was a minivan in the driveway. Daryl hadn't lived in a neighborhood since he was a kid. He hadn't planned on living in one ever again.

"Well, while you were _not _picturing living in a picket fence house, where you also _not _picturing knocking up a lawyer?" Leah was losing the tiny slice of patience she had to begin with, Daryl could hear it slipping away. "This isn't how I pictured my life going, either, you know."

"Well, princess, maybe you shoulda thought about that before you lowered your standards all the way down to me."

"Don't start a fight, Daryl, not now."

"I ain't –" He faced her in time to see her wiping her eyes, which made him stop cold, like always. She never used to cry over their fights. Hell, she used to more or less thrive on them. But at nearly five months pregnant, she was shedding tears left and right, and he couldn't even get mad because the crying embarrassed her enough as it was.

"I'm trying here, Daryl, I am," she whispered.

"I am, too, Leah, I . . ." Then came the guilt, drowning the discomfort and whatever else was going on inside of him, at least enough for him to cross the room. "Damn it, the house is good," he said, wrapping an arm around her. "I'm good with it."

"You're just saying that."

"Yeah. 'Cause I'm tryin', too."

"I know . . ." She sniffled and pulled back, smoothing out his shirt before heaving a sigh. "Just tell me what you think," she said steadily. "Really."

He let her go and rested against the wall, though he kept a hand on her back, hidden underneath her hair. He played with a strand of it and swallowed. "I think we should get it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, why not? Nice enough place. Got an office for you, big garage for me, good bedroom for us . . . Good one for Little Hellraiser."

"Please stop calling our child Little Hellraiser. Before my mother hears you."

"C'mon, 'tween your blood and mine, the kid ain't gonna be able to help raisin' some hell. Might as well accept that now."

She backed up to him, leaned against the wall, surveyed the room. "So is this it? This where we're shackin' up?"

"Unless you want to marry me . . . You wanna marry me?"

"Really?"

"Yep."

She shook her head. "Can't believe you're already asking again."

"Third time's the charm," he said, seriously, even though he knew it wouldn't do any good.

"I'm not marrying you because you got me pregnant."

"I ain't askin' 'cause I got you pregnant."

"Yeah, I'm calling bullshit." Leah stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. "I love you, though."

He wondered how hard that was for her to say.

"Ask me again," she said, "Some other time. After the baby comes. If you still want to."

He trailed a hand down her arm, picked at one of the bumps on her skin, and she slapped his hand away. She hated those bumps. Daryl jerked his head down the hall then, after the realtor. "Go on, go buy us a house."

"You sure?"

"Figure we should commit to somethin', at least."

"That's a cheap shot." But she did go down the hall. Daryl heard her voice turn airy, the way it did when she was talking to people she didn't know, and as the realtor answered in that screeching tone Daryl tuned them both out and returned to the kitchen and out to the patio. The fresh air was nice for a second or two, but then a car squealed by and broke him out of his moment's peace, and he could hear what sounded like two old ladies in the next yard over, and a dog barked somewhere, some annoying yippy dog that he could probably crush with his boot. Daryl stared out at the woods beyond the fence, then up at the blue sky and the rolling clouds, and that's where he found comfort as he took his cigarettes out of one pocket, his lighter from another. He was trying to cut down for the kid's sake, but damn, he needed one right now, so he lit up and enjoyed every puff, listening to the cars and the old women and the dog and watching the clouds. All the while he did his best to convince himself that Little Hellraiser would be worth all this.

. . . . .

"I like Jacob," Leah said that night, "After my grandfather."

"Call him Jake for short?"

"Yeah."

"Maybe," Daryl muttered, pulling the covers over his shoulder. He'd come to bed after Leah, but found her wide awake when he got here. That had been twenty minutes ago. She didn't show any signs of sleeping, which meant it was unlikely that he'd get to anytime soon, but his eyes still kept falling closed. Didn't slow Leah down a bit, though.

"Jacob Samuel . . ." she said.

"No, not that."

"Why not?"

"Jacob Samuel Dixon? No."

"Jacob Alexander?"

_"Hell_ no."

"You could make some suggestions, you know."

"Women are better at this stuff."

"Oh, no, don't pull that shit."

". . . Curt. Jacob Curt Dixon."

"Fine. Women are better at this stuff."

She tugged at the cover. Daryl tugged back.

"What if it's a girl?" he grunted. "You never play around with girl names."

"Would you be happy with a girl?"

"Course I would."

She began drawing shapes on his arm. "Really? Your brother wants a boy."

"That's just 'cause he thinks _you_ want a girl."

"But a little boy you could take hunting, fishing . . ."

"What, I can't do that with a little girl?"

"What if she doesn't want to? What if she wants to take ballet and dress up like a princess?"

"Then we let your mother have her." He opened his eyes, and once they adjusted to the dark, he could see Leah driving her tongue into the side of her mouth. She did that when she was nervous. "Wanna know the truth, Leah?"

"Maybe."

"I'd rather it be a girl."

"I don't believe you."

"Mean it."

"Why would you rather it be a girl?"

"Dunno. Sugar 'n spice, all that shit."

She was quiet.

He sighed. "My old man had boys, Leah."

" . . . So?"

He wasn't up to answering. Wasn't even sure what his answer would be, he really wasn't, he just knew that it made him feel better, made more sense in the long run, to think that he would not have a son. But Leah touched his shoulder. The side of his face. "Daryl," she began slowly, "I can tell you right now, whether this baby is a boy or a girl, you'd never. . ."

Just their breathing.

"You're a good man, Dixon." She burrowed into him.

Only breathing again, for a good while, until he said, "I like Rose."

"What?"

"If it's a little girl. I like Rose."

"That's an old person's name."

"You asked for suggestions," he said, pressing his face into his pillow. "There ya go."


	6. Frozen

"You said you'd come, you weren't there, I have every right to be pissed off, so _don't you tell me I'm overreacting!"_ Leah – the up-and-coming golden child lawyer currently on a record-breaking streak of courtroom victories – stomped her foot. "I'm _not!_ It was important!"

"I ain't tellin' you sorry again," Daryl said from the other side of the living room. He had to work to keep his voice level. Leah was close to tears, but he was too pissed off to feel very bad about it. She _was _overreacting. So much it was almost scary.

"You're not sorry." Her voice cracked. "You don't care. You don't care about this baby at all."

His efforts to keep his voice level went out the window. "I don't care 'bout this baby?" He threw an arm out to the room, because now, now she was just being stupid. "Why don't you take a look around at this damn house I moved into? At the extra money we got comin' in 'cause of the overtime I'm puttin' in at work?"

"Okay –"

"And somethin' else – I think it's pretty funny how you're talkin' 'bout me not carin' 'bout the baby when you're the one who went as far as drivin' to some clinic to get it cut outta you!"

The room turned to ice – beginning and ending with Leah's face, her body, her arms that were crossed just above the bulge in her stomach. Because they never talked about that. They weren't supposed to talk about that, Daryl was very much a supporter of not talking about that.

The room stayed frozen for a while.

"It didn't happen," Leah said finally. "And I want you out of my house."

"Oh, _y__our _house, huh?"

"Yeah, my house." The room was thawing. "Most of the bills are paid straight out of my paycheck, you're damn right it's my house."

If there had been something close enough to Daryl, he would have hit it, knocked it over, smashed it, but all he could do was head for the door. "Yeah, too bad some of us ain't born with a silver spoon shoved in our mouths."

"That's right, some of us are born rednecks, without a trace of ambition or desire to make _a damn thing_ out of life!"

Daryl yanked his jacket from the coat rack. "Go to hell, Leah."

"Where're you going?"

And there it was. The chink in her armor. The spike of insecurity, of fear.

It was too late.

"What do you care? You don't want me here, do ya? Hell, if I had to bet, I'd say you didn't even want me at that sonogram today. Probably grateful as shit I forgot –"

"God, you're an idiot –"

"– but it gave you a nice reason to scream at me. Couldn't pass that up." He swung the jacket on. It was heavy.

"You're full of yourself."

He jabbed his finger at her and yelled, maybe louder than he'd ever yelled at her before, _"You are the last goddamn person to be talkin'!"_

Black rivers streamed down her face, but otherwise, Leah remained the perfect image of stoicism. Even her swollen eyes had walls up. "Why don't you go find some slut who's as white trash as you to screw around with tonight? At least if she gets pregnant, she won't _force_ you to move into a nice house in a nice neighborhood."

"Maybe she won't be a self-centered, spoiled bitch, neither."

He slammed the door behind him, so hard something might have broken. He didn't go back to check.


	7. A Better Moment

Daryl got home around three a.m.

Leah was on a barstool in the kitchen, expressionless. She kept her eyes on his feet while he crossed the living room, though. Checking to see if he was drunk. Whatever, Daryl didn't care, he wasn't. And hell, even if he had been, what would she do? Yell some more? Nah. More likely she'd ask him to remind her what it was like.

"Find a slut?" she asked as he came into the kitchen.

"No one in my price range." He dropped a grocery bag in front of her. She eyed it, eyed him, then there was the soft rustling of plastic and Leah pulled out a smaller, more colorful bag. Her eyes narrowed. The lighting was dim in the kitchen, she only had the bulbs above the counter on, and even irritated her eyes had a nice gleam to them. So did her hair. She was gorgeous.

Daryl wasn't drunk, but he was sure as hell buzzed.

"You know I can't have caffeine." She held up the bag. It was coffee, Hotchkin's Best, her favorite brand. Hazelnut flavored and all. Daryl shrugged off his jacket, nodded.

"All that time in law school, they never taught ya to read?"

So Leah looked at the bag again, longer, and soon gasped. Because below the large, curling letters of _Hazelnut _were the smaller green blocky ones spelling out _Decaffeinated. _

"How the hell did you find this? I looked everywhere, no one had this in decaf!"

"There's a store, not far from work. Owned by my boss's brother. Go there for lunch sometimes. And a beer." Again, he gestured at the coffee, which Leah now hugged against her chest in a loving manner Daryl could only hope she'd exhibit for their baby. "He had that tonight."

He didn't tell her he'd asked his boss's brother to keep an eye out for the stuff.

Leah let the coffee rest in her lap with a tiny sigh and a smile, but the smile didn't last long. "Go to the store for a drink?"

Daryl nodded and crossed his arms on the bar. She was at one end and he was at the other.

"Where else did you go?"

"Just drove around, mostly." And what the hell? "Stopped at Merle's for a couple hours."

"You bitch about me?"

"Yep."

"Well, I called my mom and bitched about you, so I guess I can't complain."

Silence inside the house. Outside, though, there were crickets chirping, singing away like it was the one and only purpose to life. Daryl liked the crickets. They made it easier to pretend the house was somewhere else.

"You know," Leah said after a while, "I don't have any friends besides you. I realized that tonight. I mean, there's my mom, but we're so different . . ." She laughed. Not a good laugh. "And she hasn't really approved of many of my recent choices. . . I should have a girlfriend to call, you know? Or two. Or three. I should have girls' nights and go out for margaritas and complain about you to sympathetic ears, but I don't. And honestly, it's not really something I miss . . . But I'd miss you."

Daryl didn't know how to reply to that so he didn't try. She didn't ask him to.

Crickets chirped.

He stood, cleared his throat, went around the bar and to the counter, opened a cabinet and grabbed a glass. "How'd the sonogram go?" Better late than never. "The baby fine?"

He was at the sink filling the cup when Leah answered. "She's coming along just right."

The glass was only a third of the way full but Daryl stopped the faucet anyway.

"She?"

"She."

She. Little Hellraiser was a she. A daughter. Leah's. And his. "Well, let's hope she looks like you. Acts like neither of us." He drank the water, but it didn't seem to do anything, his mouth stayed dry. He should have downed more beer tonight, that's what would have helped.

She.

This is what he had wanted. A girl. But now the idea made his throat tighten, so much that he couldn't even force down the last gulp of water he needed so badly and he ended up just dumping it out and turning to Leah, who was watching him. Shit. He tried to make something like a smile happen, but it didn't, so instead he found himself beside her, running his fingers up and down her arm. She rested her chin on her shoulder and followed his hand with her eyes.

This was supposed to be a better moment than this.

He could fix it. More or less. _I would miss you, too, _that's all it would take_. _He had forgotten the sonogram. He hadn't been there, staring at the shape on the screen while Leah held his arm, while the doctor said to start buying pink. He'd stormed out of the house and left the mother of his unborn daughter crying.

_I would miss you, too. _

Easy to say, and it would make things alright. Or close enough. Close enough for them to try and be happy. They should be happy right now.

"I'll sleep on the couch if you want me to," he said.

"I'm not your wife. I can't tell you what to do."

"Never seems to stop you from tryin'."

"Come to bed."

She got up and headed for their room, leaving the coffee on the bar and Daryl with the right words dead on his tongue.


	8. Sydney

It was a cloudy Saturday in September, the eighth month of the pregnancy, and Leah and Daryl were in his truck and five miles from her grandfather's house when she said, "We need to talk about some things."

He tensed, because she had taken the tone she used when preparing for an argument, and Daryl didn't want to fight right now. Leah's mom already hated him enough without her daughter storming into the birthday dinner with a whole new batch of reasons to despise Daryl. "What things?"

"Parent things. My Poppy'll be asking a lot of questions today." Leah rubbed her stomach, looking very pregnant. "I talked to him last night on the phone, he's so excited about her . . ."

Her voice had changed a little. When she had first said she wanted to make the hour's drive to Jacob Cartwright's house, Daryl's agreement had been begrudging. Over the past few days, though, she had been in a brighter mood than Daryl had seen in weeks, which was a relief. But he hadn't known she was so close to her grandfather. It was probably something he should've known.

"What're you thinkin' 'bout?" He braked for a stop sign.

"For starters – " and just like he'd expected, she fell back into her battlefield voice, "– I know you're old fashioned about a lot of things, and that's all well and good, but if you're one of those men who thinks it's solely the mother's duty to get up in the middle of the night when the baby's screaming . . ."

"What if she's hungry? Ain't you gonna . . ."

"Breastfeed?"

He nodded once.

"Yeah, but they make equipmentthat lets me pump the milk out and put it into bottles. So you'll be able to feed her, too."

Had he ever fed a baby? He tried to remember. He could recall holding one, vaguely, but he didn't know when or where or how. But a baby bottle? He drew a blank.

"And on that note," Leah continued, "What's our general philosophy gonna be for when she cries? I mean, are we gonna get her right away or let her go for a while?"

"What, just leave her while she's cryin'?"

"Lots of people do."

"If a baby cries, it's 'cause she needs somethin'."

"But if we come every time she cries, won't she learn that Mommy and Daddy'll drop everything to please her?"

"Leah, a newborn ain't gonna be learnin' nothin'."

"They say you have to start these things early, though, Dixon."

He worked his jaw, tightening and loosening his fingers on the steering wheel. He imagined it, lying awake and listening to his daughter wailing and wailing from across the dark house. "I ain't leavin' my kid cryin' in her crib."

A minute went by and Leah said, "Okay," and if Daryl wasn't mistaken, there was a note of approval in her voice. He'd passed some test, apparently. "What about discipline?" she asked. "Are we gonna spank?"

He swallowed. "Part of it all, ain't it?"

"_Discipline _is_. _Not necessarily _spanking. _There are lots of alternative methods."

"Like what?"

"Time-outs, taking away toys, just _talking_ to them about why what they did was wrong . . ."

"If a four-year-old kid runs out in the street or lies to my face, I ain't really good with just _talkin' _to her 'bout why it was wrong. And I don't think stickin' her in the corner or takin' away her teddy bear'll make much of an impression, neither."

"It might."

"If you're against it, why'd ya ask?"

"I'm not against it, my parents spanked me. Well, my dad at least. And I'm actually closer to him than my mother, really, I just thought . . ."

"What?"

"I thought _you_ might be against it."

"Why?"

"Just a thought."

"'Cause of my dad?"

She said nothing.

"What, you think I don't know the difference 'tween what he did and puttin' a kid over my knee?"

"I didn't say that."

"Just 'cause he was an asshole who didn't know where to draw the line –"

"Daryl. I didn't say that."

He stopped, swallowed again, cracked his knuckles against the steering wheel.

"I'm fine with spanking, I don't think there's anything wrong with it," Leah said. "I do think you're making it sound easier than it'll be."

He imagined a miniature version of Leah, tiny and fragile, darting in front of speeding traffic. "If she needs it, I ain't gonna have no problem doin' it."

"Dixon, you can't even stand the idea of letting her cry in her crib."

"Just when she's a baby! It'll change when she's older, we can work it out then. Hell, we shouldn't even be worryin' 'bout this stuff yet, Leah, it's just gonna be . . . diapers and bottles and pacifiers. For a while . . . This the turn?"

"Yeah." She waited until after Daryl had the truck rolling down a shining blacktop and towards a distant neighborhood surrounded by sparse but colorful trees before she said, "You're gonna be totally wrapped around her finger, you know."

"Like hell I will."

"You will. We need to figure out what daycare to take her to after I go back to work. Mom said she was bringing brochures today, but they'll all be the swimming-pool-and-pony-rides kind, we need to look into some more affordable options. Speaking of which, we should go ahead and start a college fund, too."

"Good Lord, Leah, we don't even have the kid's name picked out."

"You said you liked Rose."

"You said you didn't."

"Well, I've been thinking it could work as a middle name."

"And her first name?"

"I don't know . . ." Her head fell against the headrest, crushing the intricate bun she'd spent twenty minutes on this morning, but she didn't seem to care. "I wasn't like all the other little girls. I didn't spend recess dreaming up baby names."

They'd reached the houses. Nice, and not in the way their house was . . . These houses belonged to those touching the ceiling of upper-middle class life_._ Jacob was a long-retired lawyer who had worked for a high-class firm in New York most of his life. As a result, he could afford to spend his golden years in this neighborhood, the kind of place with three-story brick houses and pools and driveways studded with BMWs, the kind of neighborhood that made Daryl oddly grateful for his own. He navigated the leaf-littered street, every muscle he had tightening.

"How about Jessica?" said Leah.

"Nah."

"Laura?"

"You even tryin' now?"

"Not really . . ." She sighed, but suddenly twisted in her seat – not easy with her belly – and said, "You missed the turn."

"Thought you said it was at the end of Oak?"

"No, you go down Oak, and at the end you turn onto Sydney, and that's the street Poppy's house is on . . . It's back there a little ways."

Daryl checked the rearview, saw the little green sign he must have missed. "That ain't at the end," he muttered as he made a U-Turn Leah didn't bother scolding him for.

Her next question surprised him, especially because there was suddenly an edge – just an edge – of doubt to her tone.

"Are you worried about when the baby gets here?"

"Nah, we'll be fine."

The answer was automatic. He had thought over that question more than any of the others, but he'd never reached an answer he could be content with. But Leah didn't need to know that. She was touching his leg now.

"Maybe," she said, "As long as you're there."

He thought about switching driving hands, holding hers with his free one. She'd probably like that.

But she'd already drawn her arm back in. "For the baby, I mean. 'Cause you'll be wrapped around her finger and all –"

"Shut up, woman."

"It's gonna be so cute watching you play with her and her dolls –"

"Dolls? No –"

"Oh, and someday she'll start dating, and you'll be so – Oh, God."

"What?" And then he heard the splashing sound, like water from a bucket.

"Oh, God – _damn it."_ Fingers clamped onto Daryl's shoulder, Leah did her best to lift herself out of the seat. Her jeans and everything under her was soaked.

"Leah –"

"You need to turn around. We need to go to the hospital."

"I don't know where the hospital is out here!"

"No, no, I don't either, I . . ." She put a hand to her forehead, sunk down into the wet. "You need to keep driving, we need to get to Poppy's . . ."

Daryl looked at Leah's lap for too long. "It's a month early . . ."

"Want me to ask her to wait? Look, it's just, it's just there, see? At the corner? Mom and Dad are already here, good –"

Daryl saw the house, saw his sort-of-in-laws' white Porsche. His knuckles had gone just as white, hell, he'd have trouble getting them off the wheel –

"Hey," Leah said, "You told me you weren't worried, right?"

"I ain't."

"Good." She sounded calmer now. "Then relax."

"I am relaxed!" He took a breath. "You relax, take care of my kid."

"Okay." She leaned back in her seat, took a breath of her own, much deeper than his. "You take care of me."


	9. Wrapped

"She wants to see you," Molly – Leah's erratic mother – said when she appeared in the waiting room ten long hours after their arrival to this too-big and too-unfamiliar hospital.

Daryl shot to his feet. "The doctor said the baby wasn't breathing right –"

"Just a little scare." Molly was obviously exhausted, had just met her first grandchild, and still managed to look at Daryl with total, unquestionable contempt. "Leah will have to keep a close eye on her, but she should be fine."

"We'll both keep an eye on her. You said she wants to see me? She got the baby with her?"

"Of course she has the baby with her. Go."

Henry clapped Daryl on the shoulder and Daryl started walking. He knew the way to the room. He'd paced to it and back a thousand times.

One of those times he'd heard Leah screaming. An awful scream, more animal than human.

Down the white halls, across the green tile and past people in slacks and lab coats. There was the door. He thought about it, decided to knock, heard someone answer, not Leah. He opened the door and there she was, Leah, lying in bed. Holding something. Her hair was pinned back and some strands still stuck to her face, twice as pale as Molly's. But she smiled at him. And she bounced the pink bundle she held. "'Bout time you showed up."

He took a shaky breath. "Didn't 'spect you to keep me waitin' so long." He went to her, passing and ignoring a nurse on the way, and stood over the bed. Swallowed. Because there it was. There she was. The product of alcohol and cigarettes, of nine months of fighting and swearing and sex, the reason behind his house, the ring he kept in his bedside table, the will he'd let Leah write up. There was his daughter. Closed eyes and swollen lips. Little, little fists poking out from her blanket. Small, tiny and fragile, six pounds, six ounces, just the barest fuzz of blonde on her head.

"What do you think?" Leah whispered.

Daryl should have talked but he just nodded and cleared his throat.

Leah giggled a little. She wasn't much of a giggler, it must have been the drugs. She lifted the bundle – their baby – about an inch in the air. "Hold her."

"No, no, I . . ."

"Dixon. Hold your daughter."

"I don't . . ."

"Support her head and don't drop her. It's that simple."

So he bent down and slid his arm under the baby, slowly. His arm was too big for her. He rose up, lifted her, with her head tucked in the crook of his elbow. She nestled there just fine, right against his chest, undisturbed. No, not undisturbed, maybe. She'd opened her eyes, opened them just enough for Daryl to notice the blue in them.

"See?" Leah dug her shoulders into her pillows. "Not hard."

Daryl began to sway back and forth. Rocking her. Rocking his baby. "Hey," he murmured, touching her hand, her fingers. "Hey, baby girl . . ."

She gurgled. Talking already. Would be just like her mom, probably, and him, yeah, she'd have an opinion about everything . . .

"It's starting . . ." said Leah.

"What?"

She was grinning, weakly, but it was there. "She's wrapping you around her finger as I speak . . ."

"Nah, she's just . . . she's just gettin' to know her old man. Ain't ya, Little Hellraiser? Yeah?"

She was holding his finger. God, his daughter. She had a good grip. No way she had a lung problem, she was a strong little thing. His daughter.

"I like Sydney," said her mother.

Daryl put his thumb over the baby girl's knuckles, gently, he'd be doing everything gently from now on. But he looked at Leah, sweaty, tired, so damn pretty. "For her name?"

"No. I like Sydney, Australia. I want to take a vacation. Yes, her name."

"Smartass . . ."

"What do you think?"

"Sydney Rose . . . Yeah, I like that. Sydney Rose Dixon? You like that, sweetheart?"

He could have sworn she tightened her hold on his finger.


	10. Now's the Time

Daryl was glad they had the baby monitor. He really was. Sydney's nursery was beside Leah's office, all the way across the house, and the monitor was the only reason he was okay with the distance.

Didn't mean he didn't feel like smashing the damn thing against the wall half the time.

Tonight, three-and-a-half weeks after they'd brought the baby home, her familiar wails came over the monitor from Leah's bedside table and jerked Daryl from sleep. His bedside clock read two a.m. He'd already been up at twelve-forty with the kid. His head sank back to his pillow and he felt Leah roll over, and there was a yank on the bedspread, and over the crying Daryl heard, "Can you get her?"

Hell no, he couldn't. "It's your turn."

"Daryl, I'm with her all day."

That was a shitty excuse and one day Daryl, who five days a week worked his ass off from at least nine to five, would tell her so. But he was exhausted, and dealing with Sydney actually tended to be less draining than dealing with her mother. So he swore just loud enough for her to hear and kicked his way out of the bed.

He could make the walk to the nursery in his sleep, felt like he did half the time. He reached the room, with its purple walls and purple rug and purple elephant-patterned curtains, got to Sydney's cradle, scooped her up; she screamed like nothing had changed. "What's wrong with you, kid? Huh? Aw . . ."

He'd fed her last time. Her diaper was clean, and he tried to get her to suck her thumb but she wouldn't take it, just kept crying.

"C'mon, baby girl, I gotta go to work tomorrow . . ."

He bounced her up and down, walked the room, was considering taking her for a drive, when Leah showed up in the doorway. The moonlight made her pale skin glow blue. "Have you tried singing to her?"

"I come off as a singer to you?"

"Then hum, for God's sake. She's a baby, she wants a lullaby."

He fell against the wall, blew out some air, listened to Sydney screech some more, and gave in. He hummed the first song that came to mind.

"'Hush, Little Baby'?" Leah said. "That's the best you got?"

"If you ain't gonna do nothin', leave."

She came over and brushed her fingers across Sydney's belly. "'_It's nine o'clock on a Saturday; the regular crowd shuffles in . . . There's an old man sittin' next to me; makin' love to his tonic and gin . . .'"_

She went on, finishing the verse, going through the chorus, and by then, Sydney had gone quiet. Listening, like Daryl was. Maybe she was like him. Couldn't help but listen when Lea sang.

"So she likes songs about drinkin'," he whispered. "Good to know."

"It's about more than drinking. She should be good now."

Daryl laid the baby in her cradle, waited for her to cry again, but she didn't. She was out. He stood up straight and Leah kissed his arm. "I was only kidding. I'm sure she'll be just fine with 'Hush, Little Baby'. You hum it very well."

Daryl watched Sydney's back move up and down, her fist clinging to her blanket. He'd never seen a baby as pretty as her. He'd always thought that, as far as babies went, humans had the ugliest. Sydney didn't fit the pattern.

"Hey, Dixon?"

"Hm?"

Leah pressed something into his hand. The little black box from his bedside table drawer.

"If you still want to marry me, right now's the time to ask. I'd say yes right now."

He thought for a while.

He knelt when he did it. He knew she'd want him to do that.


	11. The Only Damn One

Daryl unlocked the door as quietly as he could. He'd told Leah not to wait up, so maybe they could get in without her seeing – but he stepped through his front door and here she was, right in the middle of the living room, clearly just out of bed, and she took him in – the cut on his cheek, the bruises forming on his eye, his chin – and she understood.

But not completely. She didn't understand completely until Merle shoved in behind him.

"Well, look who's up," the older Dixon said. The damage on him was just as bad. Dried blood smudged under his nose. "Mind gettin' us some beers, sweetheart? We never did get to finish our drinks, did we, little brother?"

"You son of a bitch –"

"Leah, hang on –"

But she slipped right past Daryl and slapped Merle across the face.

Daryl yanked her off, wrestled with her, got himself between his fiancée and his brother, and the first kept struggling against his arm and the latter – laughed.

"My God – you gotta be the dumbest college-educated bitch in alla Georgia!"

"Man, shut up!" snapped Daryl, right as Leah twisted away from him, her hands in fists, her eyes on Merle.

"I'm sick of it!" she shouted. "I'm sick of him coming home looking like this –"

"Well, darlin', shoulda thought about that 'fore ya spread 'em –"

"Merle, _shut the hell up! _Damn it, Leah, it was me! Some guys at a bar started somethin' –"

"Don't even try that –"

"Try what?"

"_Covering _for him! He's not worth it, don't you get that? You're –"

A new sound cut through the room. Crying.

Daryl looked at the floor. Leah exhaled and pressed a hand to her mouth. She seemed to shrink.

"Someone gonna get that?" Merle drawled.

Daryl's fingers curled to meet his palms. Leah stayed perfectly still for a good five, ten seconds, eyes closed. Finally, "Get out of our house."

"You kiddin' me? Ain't even got my beer yet –"

"You heard her," said Daryl.

Merle stopped short. "What was that, son?"

Daryl swallowed. Relaxed his hands. "It's the middle of the night, bro. Sydney's cryin', it ain't the time for this."

"Ain't the time for this. Ha." Merle shoved off the door. "Ain't the _man _for this, more like."

Leah took a handful of Daryl's shirt. Merle opened the door.

"When you get your balls back, boy, you gimme a call." His eyes went to Leah. "Say hi to my niece for me." Then he was gone.

And so was the grip on Daryl's shirt.

She stepped away from him. He reached out, said her name, she smacked his hand away. "You woke her up. Get her back to sleep."

"You're pissed at _me_ now?"

"I've been pissed at you since you came home – no, no, I take that back, I've been pissed at you since you left with him."

"With my own damn brother."

"He's not good for you, Daryl."

"He's _my brother."_

"And every time you leave here with him I wonder if this'll be the time he gets you thrown in jail or killed, Daryl –" She whirled away, both hands over her mouth now.

"Leah."

"Go take care of Sydney."

"Leah, I'm – you know I don't –"

"Please go take care of her."

So he went down the hall, he picked up his daughter. She stopped crying fast, she was just being fussy. She didn't want to fall asleep, though. She sucked one hand, used the other to hold onto his. Gazed up at him.

"Don't look too good, do I? You should see the other guy."

She gurgled.

"Yeah, your old man ain't too smart, Syd. But you're gonna be smarter. Hear me? You're gonna be so much better'n me, kid . . . I'ma make ya be."

It took a half-hour, it took him humming that stupid song, but she fell asleep. When he left the room, the kitchen light was still on. Leah was at the table, a first-aid kit in front of her.

"Since when we have that?"

"Come here."

"What?"

"Your face is broken. I'm going to fix it. It's mothering."

"That ain't creepy or nothin'."

"Sit down."

He did. She handed him an ice pack. He pressed it to his eye and scowled as she leaned forward and began to wash the cut.

"Did the guy have a ring?"

"No, he had a fist."

"Forgive me for not knowing how bar fights work."

"It wasn't Merle's fault, Leah."

"Whatever."

"It wasn't."

"Fine."

"He's my brother. I can't just cut him out of my life. He's –"

"He's family." She pulled back her arm. "What's Sydney?"

Daryl lowered the ice pack.

"What am I?"

"Whataya want? You want me to choose?"

"No. I want you to realize that eventually you're gonna have to, no matter what I say."

"What're you talkin' about?"

"Dixon. One day your brother's life will end before its time."

Daryl stood. "Thanks for the checkup."

"It will be him getting locked away for life, or it will be something involving drugs, or it will be a crash, or it will be . . . in an alley somewhere –"

"Stop talkin', Leah!"

_"Don't yell."_

He fell silent. She was on her feet now, too. They waited for the crying, but it never came.

"All I need to know is if you'll be beside him when that day comes," she said. She was working hard to control herself. Daryl couldn't tell if it was against anger or fear or sadness or what, shit, he wasn't good at this. He stared at her feet. Her toenails weren't painted. He wished she'd leave them like that more often.

"I'm about to marry you," he said. "You're the only damn one I plan on bein' beside."


	12. The Night Before

"Damn baby weight," Leah pinched at a bit – a tiny bit – of fat underneath her arm.

"You look good."

"Yeah, you better say that."

"You do." Daryl caught her eye in the mirror. "You look real good."

She stopped adjusting her dress. The corners of her lips curled up.

She had opted out of a big wedding, said it was too impractical for a couple like them, and Daryl was the last person to complain. So tomorrow – winter weather be damned – they'd get married in their backyard, with just the preacher from Leah's old church and Leah's parents and grandfather, plus some Texan aunt and two cousins Daryl had never met before. And Merle. And Sydney, of course, who at the moment was lying on Daryl's stomach, wide awake. He rubbed her back and eyed her mother and the cream-colored sundress she wasn't supposed to wear until the next day. Leah had told him Molly had almost had a fit seeing the dress for the first time, evidently having always envisioned her daughter in a stark white dress, long and traditional, straight from the pages of a fairy-tale.

But, for better or worse, that wasn't Leah. And Daryl thought the sundress was sexy as hell.

Leah bundled up her hair and pressed it to her scalp, showing off the dress's scooped back and her smooth, white skin. She could complain all she wanted, but Daryl had meant it, she looked great. She again caught him watching in the mirror, she smiled, then she flat-out grinned and let her hair fall back around her shoulders, over her back. "You shouldn't be seeing me in this."

"Then take it off. Be just as good to me."

"You dog. You're holding our child."

"'Bout time for her to go to bed, anyway." Sydney had recently discovered the ability to lift her head and couldn't stop doing it. Too much to look at. She clung to Daryl's shirt, wobbly but upright, fascinated by the antique lamp lighting the room from the dresser. Daryl covered his daughter's eyes. She pressed back on his hand, giving a high-pitched grunt. "If she'd be a good girl and go to sleep for me."

You leave her alone." Leah got on the bed, walked over to him on her knees. "She's an angel. You're an angel, yeah? Yeah?"

Sydney beamed at her, toothless and undeniably cute. "Quit spoilin' her," Daryl said anyway.

"Oh, don't you talk . . ." Leah put her hand over the one Daryl had on Sydney's back. Neither of them spoke for a while. Daryl played with Sydney's fingers and Leah watched the wall, eyes narrowed.

"I'm not nervous," she said eventually. "I expected myself to be, but I'm not."

"You thought you'd be nervous 'bout the weddin'?" he asked, and she nodded, and he said, "You already got a kid and a house with me. This ain't that bigga deal."

"For me, it is. It is."

Sydney had managed to get Daryl's finger into her mouth. He let her keep it, looked at Leah. She was looking at the ring on her hand on his hand on their daughter.

"I've been committed to Sydney," she said slowly. "Because I've had to be . . . But the fact of the matter, Dixon, is that I haven't been committed to you."

He said nothing.

"I haven't been ready for that. I'm not . . . I've never been good with commitment."

When Daryl was hunting and caught sight of an animal, he had to be careful not to spook it. He couldn't move much, but he still had to move _enough_, and move in the right way, in order to get a good shot. Or else he'd blow it. And that's what it was like with her.

She said, "My parents have been married for thirty-seven years, I shouldn't be afraid of the idea of _marriage_ . . . Always have been, though. And I never thought I'd do it . . . I never planned on accepting your proposal, you know."

He hadn't known. Wasn't surprised, though. Not even a little. Because sometimes you could do everything you knew how to do, and go out of your way to do it right, and the animal would still get spooked. Would still run.

"Then why did you?" he asked.

Leah reached with her free hand, stroked Sydney's head, the thin blonde hairs Daryl knew were as soft as down feathers. "Because that night when you got out of bed to get her even though it was my turn, I felt bad, and at first I thought it was because I was clearly in the wrong, but then I realized it was because I was in bed and you weren't with me. It was so ridiculous, it was – minutes. It was lonely, and suddenly, I just knew. As easily as I've ever known anything. I knew that if I had never become pregnant, I still would have wanted you in my life."

Sydney let go of Daryl's finger. Her mother looked at him and said, "Dixon, I want you in my life."

And everything, her words, and her voice, and her in that dress and her in their bed, _their _bed, it was all adding up too well and making Daryl feel some things he'd felt a lot before she came into his life and other things that no one before her had ever made him feel.

Yes, it was time for Sydney to go to bed. Very much so.


	13. Say It When You're Drunk

"You're gonna wake the baby up," Daryl said from the couch. Leah, standing at the side table between the two kitchen arches, just shook her head.

"No. She likes Billy Joel." She dropped the needle onto the record. Crackling piano notes drifted through the room. Leah turned and rested on the table. She was wearing one of Daryl's shirts. No pants. She smiled. "You've really never listened to him before?"

"Nope."

"Hm. If I'd have known that, I probably would have thought twice before conceiving a child with you."

"Yeah, or once."

She grinned. The only light in the room was the lamp behind her. Half of her face was in shadow. She held out a hand. "C'mere."

"What?"

"Come here."

"Why?"

"Dance with me."

"Hell no."

"Please?"

"You really think I'd know what the hell I's doin'?"

"Of course not. That's why you have me."

He stayed where he was.

"I'll do that thing you like tonight."

"What thing?"

"You know what thing."

"You will not."

"Twice."

"You swear?"

"Dance with me."

He sighed. She tilted her head, arm still outstretched. Batted her eyes. Damn her.

Daryl grabbed the wine bottle from the coffee table and took a long drink as he stood. He went to Leah and abandoned the bottle next to the record player. She took his hand and intertwined their fingers. "Okay, this is the two-step, alright? The most basic dance in the world. Put your other hand on my waist – Dixon, quit scowling."

"Now what?"

She slid her hand over his shoulder, behind his neck. "Listen. Hear that? The beat." She tapped her fingers against him.

"Yeah."

"Okay. Just move to that. Here, we'll step to my left once – yeah? – and now to your left twice . . . exactly."

"We done yet?"

"Shh. You're doing _great_. Again. Listen to the beat. It's slow, move slow."

"Okay."

"And relax."

"I ain't tense."

"I can't feel my fingers . . . Yeah. Yeah. See? You've got the hang of it. Not hard. Now you lead."

"What?"

"I've been leading, but traditionally, the man leads. It's one of those really sexist things that not many people complain about because even the feminists are secretly charmed by it. So lead, charm me."

"How –"

"Just do what I've been doing. Step left. Step right, step right . . . That's perfect. That's perfect, keep going. Keep time with the beat . . . yeah." She grinned again. "Yeah?"

He grunted.

_"She's got a way of showin' . . ." _crooned the turntable._ "How I make her feel . . . And I find the strength to keep on goin' . . ."_

Leah had gotten closer to him. His hand was on the small of her back. Her arm was wrapped around his shoulders. Their faces were very close. He could feel her breathing.

"You've got it," she said.

"You ever tell anyone 'bout this . . ."

"What? About you coming of as a suave, gentlemanly kind of guy for two-and-a-half minutes? I would never ruin your reputation like that. What kind of a wife do you think I am?"

"A good one."

"Thank you. You're a good husband."

"I'm drunk, is what I am."

"It's okay. You're not a mean drunk."

"You wouldn't say that if you weren't drunk, too."

"I wouldn't say that I love you, either. I wouldn't say that I've never been this damn happy in all my life."

"No. You wouldn't."

"And neither would you."

"Nope."

"But you can say it when you're drunk?"

"_She's got a way about her . . . _

_I don't know what it is . . ."_

"For Christ's sake, Leah. You see what I'm doin' right now?"

"_But I know that I can't live without her . . ._

_Anyway."_


	14. Tuesday Morning

On weekdays, Leah always set her alarm to go off at seven, and without fail, she slept right to it. Never woke up early, never hit snooze. Daryl's sleeping pattern was less dependable. On this particular Tuesday morning, he woke up at six-forty-two, golden light sneaking through the window shades and hitting him in the face. His arm was numb. Leah was asleep on it, hair falling over her face, hands tucked under her chin. Daryl freed himself with carefully practiced maneuvers and shook out the abused arm as he rolled from the bed, walked around it to switch off the baby monitor. He dressed fast and left the room.

He managed to put on a pot of coffee before he heard Sydney. For the past month or so, she'd either woken him up or woken up minutes after him. _She's like her daddy, _Leah had said. Daryl had shrugged that off.

She was sitting up in her crib when he got to the nursery, not crying, just chanting. "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da . . ." Her mother was counting it as her first word. She beamed when she saw him.

"Hey, kid. You sleep all through the night again?" He picked her up, smoothed her blonde hair. "That's my girl."

"Dada."

"Mm-hmm. Let's get ya breakfast."

He locked her in her high chair in the kitchen. She'd hated the thing, up until it had clicked that the momentary imprisonment always meant eating. Now, she was quiet other than banging a set of plastic keys against her table, her eyes glued to Daryl while he picked out a little jar from the cabinet overflowing with baby food.

"How 'bout peaches, huh? Your favorite?"

He pulled out a chair next to her. Sydney cried whenever a bib got close, so Daryl just tossed a rag on the table next to him. It'd have to do.

She was a good eater, when she was in a good mood. As messy as any baby, though. The food slipped from her mouth and onto her chest time and time again, and Daryl was thinking that he would eventually have to crack down and start snapping on the damn bib whether either of them liked it or not when the _beep beep beep _of Leah's alarm sounded.

"What's your mom gonna say when she sees the mess you've made, huh?" Daryl said, wiping the rag over Sydney's mouth. She gave him a disdainful look. He spooned her another bite, she slurped it down. Leah hadn't appeared. The kitchen was always her first stop in the morning, before the closet, before the bathroom. She said she needed coffee to function.

Daryl called her name. No answer.

Unease settled into the pit of his stomach. A year and a half, and he'd never seen her sleep through an alarm.

"C'mere." He cleaned Sydney's mouth one more time and lifted her from the chair. "Let's go check on your mama."

"Dada – dada!"

"Shh, we'll finish eatin' later. Here." He handed her her keys. She stuck them in her mouth and clasped onto his shirt.

Leah was still under the covers when they got to the bedroom. Seven-oh-five, the alarm clock read. Daryl kept one arm on Sydney as he sat on the mattress. The other he used to shake his wife's shoulder. "Leah. Hey. It's past seven."

She shifted.

"Leah. C'mon."

Her eyes opened halfway, found him. They closed just as fast and disappeared into her pillow. She rolled over completely, pulling some covers with her.

"Da-da-da-da-da-da." Sydney slapped the keys against the bed.

"Leah, what're you doin'? You sleep in, you'll be freakin' out in an hour."

A long sigh.

"Would you talk, woman? You sick or –"

"Go away."

"Da-da-da-da . . ."

"What you just say?"

"Go away."

Daryl stared.

"Da-da-da-da-da-da –"

A minute later, he was depositing their daughter into the playpen perpetually set up in the living room. Sydney dropped the keys and whimpered when he withdrew from her.

"You're fine." There was a stuffed dog on the couch. Daryl grabbed it and handed it down. "Play for a while."

She wailed one more time as he reached the hallway, but that was it.

Leah hadn't moved. Daryl went straight to her side of the bed. "Hey, you don't wanna get outta bed, fine, but don't blow me off like that."

She was still, a mound in the mattress.

"Leah –" Daryl grasped a handful of the bedspread and pulled.

It was like he'd opened a jack-in-the-box.

_"I said leave me the fuck alone!"_

Her hands rammed into his shoulders, but it wasn't the force that made him stumble back as he looked down at her, half-tangled in the sheets, teeth bared and eyes wild. "Is that _too goddamn hard_ to understand?" she shrieked.

"What _the hell_ is wrong with you?"

"It's none of your _fucking business_ if I wanna sleep all damn day! That's what the hell is wrong with me!"

"Like hell it ain't my business! I'm your damn husband now, remember? We got a damn daughter to feed, that makes it my _fuckin' business!"_

She scrambled from the blankets, sprang from the bed. Towards him.

"Then _you _feed her! If it's your fucking business, you _fucking feed her!"_

His chest and his shoulders fell under attack as her arms moved in a flurry. And Daryl wasn't giving a damn about being gentle when he caught her wrists, and he sure as hell wasn't giving a damn about it when he yanked her around, slammed her into the wall, and pinned her there.

_"I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"_

"Goddamn it, Leah, _shut up!"_

The yelling melted into sobbing. "Fuck you . . . fuck you . . ."

It was quiet enough, then, for Daryl to hear the crying from the next room.

Leah heard it, too. He saw her look towards the door. "Oh, God," she said, and started sinking down the wall. Daryl held her up. He didn't know why. He hooked an arm around her and hauled her to the bed. She fell into it and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes. Cried away. Cried and cried, wailing like her daughter. And Daryl couldn't muster up an ounce of any feeling that didn't burn.

Three months ago, they'd stood in their backyard, and she'd worn a cream-colored sundress and strands of her hair curled around her face and Daryl had never noticed the cold.

"You're insane," he said.

She sobbed. So did Sydney.

"You hear that? Hear your daughter? _You gonna do somethin' about it?"_

She did nothing about it.

The bedside table was right there. The baby monitor he'd turned off only a few minutes before was right there, the closest inanimate object, so he hurled it at the wall. It left a crack and chipped the paint.

_"Crazy bitch!" _

Then he got out of there.

Sydney was standing in the playpen, clinging to the rails, she'd only done that a couple of time before. Her face was red and tears poured down and she said _Dada, dada _and Daryl tried to pick her up, he tried, he couldn't.

"What?" His voice was wrong again, it was high, it was strangled, it wasn't him, he wanted to stop it – _"What?"_

That was worse and Sydney wailed louder and fell back, putting her fingers into her mouth and watching him differently than she usually watched him.

"You can't handle some screamin'? Some fightin'? Well, _tough!_ You got born into the wrong damn house, kid! That's your mom! And that's _me!"_

She wrapped her arms around the stuffed dog and went on and on and then here she was, of course here she was, Leah to the rescue, she scooped up Sydney and held her close and the little girl kept crying anyway and her mother looked at her father with swollen eyes but said nothing, she didn't need to.

Crying and crying. The stuffed dog fell to the floor. Daryl watched it and couldn't feel his arm again, or his hands, or his feet, he couldn't feel any part of him but he felt the crying. Sydney. Sydney Rose.

He managed to reach the garage. Once there, he got in his truck and drove away.


End file.
